Update - July 2024

Hello all!

It's been a while since the last monthly update. I'll try to explain what's been going on with me lately down below. Before that, however, let's get into the plan for this month.

Okay! So I've set up a pretty strict writing schedule for myself and - provided I'm able to keep to it - it'll mean three story chapters every week. One added to the Archives every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and all three posted here on Patreon together on Saturday. For the first week (in no particular order) are Tomb Raider: Raw Recruit, Morning Embrace (a follow-up to Night's Embrace), and Bleached Blonde. Next week I haven't fully decided on yet, but there'll definitely be a Baby Steps Bonanza chapter and (possibly) more Bleached Blonde.

I'll also be toying around with some of the features here on Patreon like the 'Collections' tab. And I'll be updating the Archives and the Story/Series List, making sure everything is where it belongs. Admin stuff. Yay.

Alright, elephant in the room time.

The last few months have been rough with writing and uploads and, though it's not easy for me to talk about (as the several deleted drafts will attest) I do feel I owe an explanation as to why things have been so slow lately. Long story short is that I have depression. It's been an unwanted companion in my life for years (since long before MindSpark) and it tends to come and go at random intervals - everything will be normal for months, then I'll have a few weeks of gloom, and then it'll be back to normal again. It's rare that one of my depressive intervals lasts this long - multiple months - but I'm hoping (and praying) that I'm at the tail end of it now.

I can't speak to anyone else's experiences with depression but, for me, it's like being in a state of constant melancholic exhaustion in which all the fun and excitement of life bleeds away leaving this gaping, empty hole inside me. Which probably sounds very melodramatic - my bangs are not nearly long enough to justify that. Suffice to say, it's not a good or healthy mindset to be in when writing (sexy smut especially). Whenever I'm not passing out right as I sit down to write, I'm struggling to find words to put together. And when I finally manage to get something written, I reread it only to decide it's terrible and I delete it all and start again - even more stressed and anxious than before. (Here's a little fact for you; almost everything I've uploaded/posted over the last few months has been without proofreading or editing - to keep me from scrapping them.)

It's been a pain in the ass, to put it mildly.

As I said, I believe I'm at the end of this particular bout of depression. So (fingers crossed) everything will go back to relative normalcy again soon. I don't like making excuses, and I fully intend to make the wait worth it with all the smut I've got planned. I just felt like I owed it to you all to try to explain. And, well, an apology. I'm really sorry for how slow and dry things have been there last few weeks and months.

I'm gonna end this update here. There are some other things I want to talk about, but that stuff can wait - maybe I'll make a mid-month mini-update or something, who knows!

Thanks for reading, and here's to hoping for a particularly hot and steamy July.